An indie comic that's said to combine both light and dark
KMUW-TV from Wichita interviewed the creators of an indie comic titled Magnus the Brave, blending both light and dark. It begins with the usual ambiguous claims:
Comic book sales in 2021 topped $2 billion dollars, thanks in part to the massive popularity of movies adapted from comics.I just don't understand why they insist on telling us the movies are still that popular. That's no longer the case for at least a few years already. Let's continue:
And locally, two comic book creators have grown a dedicated audience for a series they created and publish entirely on their own.Well it does sound interesting, but here's the questionable part:
Ace Nuckolls and Chris Rau published the first issue of “Magnus the Brave” in 2019.
It captured the basic premise behind the journey of Magnus — a super-powered barbarian who just wants to find out where his powers came from.
“He has no idea why he has them. And so he just kind of sets out on this journey to figure everything out,” Nuckolls said.
“And then along the way, he just keeps encountering people that want to hurt him, kill him and fight him. And they seem to know more than he does.”
Nuckolls and Rau’s work draws inspiration from a number of comic book and animated series that came before it, namely Samurai Jack, Invincible, and some of the more brutal anime from the ‘80s and ‘90s, like Fist of the North Star.Gore is "fun", along with other forms of graphic violence? I'm sorry, but that's disputable. It certainly isn't funny. I wish them well in getting audience, but I still don't see why they can't try to do a tale that doesn't veer towards the obviousness of emphasizing gore, as this apparently does.
Like those series, Nuckolls and Rau say they want Magnus the Brave to strike a balance between humor, colorful characters and intense action with violent sequences.
“It's one thing to have a really dark comic and it be violent,” Nuckolls said. “But whenever it's fun and popping, with like purples and blues and yellows, but then also gore, it's just kind of a fun juxtaposition.”
The current story arc will wrap up in issue No. 6, at which point Rau says the duo plans to re-release the first six issues in a collected edition. Those collectible items are key to growing the fanbase and brand behind Magnus.See, this is what I don't get. Why begin it with pamphlets, and only later, reprint them in paperback, instead of going to the latter format and guaranteeing it'll find more of an audience who'd surely appreciate getting the whole story in one wrapping?
“We'll have a number of different collectible pieces eventually,” Rau said. “Like right now, I think we have like seven or eight different pieces that someone could collect.”
While the comic book industry has seen a number of changes since its Golden Age during and after World War II, it’s still undergoing tremendous growth.Any growth in the industry today is largely driven by independents, along with manga, since much of the readership finally tired of the woke disaster Marvel/DC became since the turn of the century, and if illustrated medium is what they're after, the indies are where they want to look. That's not saying indie creators are altogether innocent and honest, of course, and they can turn out bad stuff too. On which note:
In 2021, the industry brought in more than $2 billion – a 62% increase over the previous year. Marvel and DC represent the bulk of those sales, but there’s still room for smaller publishers like I-D-W, Image and Dark Horse.
For creatives who want to go the independent route, Nuckolls has some advice.Here's where I want to make a point. If one indie creator was developing a comic about subjects like Islamic terrorism, and the artists he or she wanted to hire vehemently refused any connection to the project, that'd not only be reprehensible, it'd compound the perception even indie creators can either be very bad, or they can fall victim to blacklisting for all the wrong reasons. So I should hope professional artists and writers alike working on indies will ponder this going forward, and not shun anybody who wants to speak out about serious issues. The same goes for journalists and publishers. Let's hope the creators of Magnus the Brave understand that too.
“Get out there and make friends,” he said. “Talk to everybody, get everybody's card, follow them all on Instagram, follow them all on socials.
“Find an artist, find a writer, and just do it.”
Labels: indie publishers, msm propaganda, sales, violence
